What Racing Needs …
More geeks, more technologists, more entrepreneurs, more people thinking deeply and creatively about programming, experience design, usability, prediction markets, social networks, mashups, content distribution.
Racing needs a start-up culture.
Moneytrack
I just finished reading “Moneyball,” by Michael Lewis, the surprisingly engrossing story of how the Oakland A’s used statistical data to build a winning team. Like a lot of other racing fans, I have an overlapping interest in baseball stats, and I find it fascinating to follow another sport also afflicted with a sclerotic power structure, dominated by people who believe they know everything about their fans and how to put on the show or market their data. The result, a collective failure of imagination leading to a management culture more interested in brand caretaking than innovation, opens up intriguing little niches, exploitable market inefficiencies. In the late-1990s in baseball, the inefficiency was in statistical analysis; in the mid-2000s in racing, the inefficiency is in technology, which no one has quite figured out yet.
What the industry also hasn’t figured out is the benefit of making charts and statistics widely, easily, and freely available. Baseball has been pushed along by the growth of fantasy games, as well as the game’s stats nerds, and the obsessive and intelligent analysis of baseball data in both pursuits can be credited with — I think it’s fair to argue — keeping the sport in the mainstream even during during dark days such as the 1994 strike and the ongoing steroids scandal. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to conclude that racing could be similarly buoyed if it removed the hassle of finding any information at all about races run more than a week ago.
Related: Over on Handride, Patrick picks up on the news that Intel is producing chips that will substantially improve online video quality, sees a glorious opportunity for the industry.
Tuesday Odds and Ends
– California pushes the ADW mess toward a solution, beginning an eight-month experiment that splits broadcast and wagering rights. So, video remains exclusive, but horseplayers can wager on any track through any online wagering service in the state (Blood-Horse).
– From ESPN Sports Poll: “The number of people in the U.S. ages 18+ who said they are interested in horse racing increased for an unmatched fifth consecutive year.”
– It was sad to see Lava Man finish sixth in the California Cup Classic against a field he would have demolished last year (LA Times); it was also sad to see Digger all alone in the Laurel winner’s circle (WashPost).
– Nashua winner Etched is Dubai-bound, as is impressive maiden winner Music Note (DRF).
DC Ban Traces to Oregon
The abrupt ADW closures that shut out DC horseplayers last weekend were the result of a state criminal code review by the Oregon Racing Commission, reports John Scheinman in today’s Washington Post:
Commission officials recently reviewed state criminal codes and discovered it is illegal to accept or place bets on horse races within the District. As the regulator of a multi-jurisdictional “hub” for interstate horse racing bets made online, the commission advised advanced deposit wagering companies (ADWs) they were at risk of breaking the law.
The Oregon Racing Comission regulates the hub through which most US-based online wagering is routed.
Displaying their usual concern for the customer, Youbet and other services closed mid-card Saturday with little notice. “I’m betting early in the card, maybe the third or fourth race, and when I got back on for the ninth I couldn’t bet,” Mike Soper told the Post. “In the middle of the day, they decided this was illegal and they couldn’t take bets.”
10/8 Addendum: J.S. supplies some additional information from his Thoroughbred Times article in the comment below and raises a few good questions — what is going on with Youbet?
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The California Horse Racing Board is considering requiring all ADWs that operate in the state to share wagering content as a condition of licensing. “I believe it is time for this board to step up and do something for our fans and do something for our industry,” said CHRB chairman Richard Shapiro (ThoroTimes). The proposal would sensibly separate wagering rights from broadcast rights, a necessary division for the online market to evolve.
Failure Happens
Nothing to do with racing, but I’m fascinated by the story of last Tuesday’s massive power outage at a San Francisco data center that wiped out Typepad, Technorati, Yelp, Craigslist, and a bunch of other Web 2.0 sites for several hours. Turns out, the impossible happened:
In this incident, latent defects caused three generators to fail during start-up. No customers were affected until a fourth generator failed 30 seconds later, which overloaded the surviving backup system and caused power failures to 3 of 8 customer areas.
What’s most interesting is that the redundant design of the system is what caused it to fail so completely. The failure of the fourth generator should have only brought down one area instead of three. This kind of cascade failure is common in complex & tightly coupled systems. In my experience, these sorts of failure-modes are often identified and then promptly dismissed as being “nearly impossible.” Unfortunately, the impossible often becomes reality. (O’Reilly Radar)
Actually, I guess the story is racing-related: Horseplayers well understand the impossible becoming reality, upsetting best-laid wagers, and anyone who plays multi-race exotics knows all about the necessity and danger of redundant design …
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Jessica Chapel writes and edits in Massachusetts. Railbird is a Thoroughbred horse racing blog published from June 2004 to July 2019. More / Contact
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